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Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Pg. 69: "How Milton Works"

Stanley Fish is Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at the College of Law at Florida International University. In addition to being one of the country's leading public intellectuals, Fish is one of the world's foremost authorities on John Milton.I asked him to apply the "page 69 test" to his book, How Milton Works. Here is what he reported:

It is not surprising that page 69 of How Milton Works is representative of that book's argument; for How Milton Works, like the Milton it describes and celebrates, says one thing over and over again, and therefore of course says it on every page, including page 69. Page 69 describes the Son of God in paradise recalling the moment when he abandoned the project of performing great deeds that would alter circumstances in the world for what he decides is the more worthy project of transforming hearts and minds by the force of persuasion. The Son thus exemplifies the Miltonic insistence that the interior landscape – the landscape of the will and settled affections – must be ordered before the actor can insert himself into the maelstrom of social and political events. Milton’s heroes and heroines – and he would include himself in the list – display their heroism by refusing to draw conclusions on the basis of the pressures the world exerts and turn instead to a law or imperative that is written on the fleshly tables of their hearts. As a result, the hero, who marches not only to a different but to an inaudible drummer, will seem out of step to those who take their cue from the evidence of things seen. One thinks of the angel Abdiel, who alone dissents from the infernal council – Satan calls him “Seditious Angel” – and receives this praise from his Lord: “For this was all thy care/ To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds / Judged thee perverse.” (Paradise Lost 6.35-37) In Milton’s world, the danger always is that the outward surface of things will overwhelm or obscure an inner truth that surfaces do not display; but that inner truth, if recalled and clung to not only dispels surfaces but reconfigures them in the light of a vision they cannot contain. This is Milton’s lesson in Paradise Regained and in everything else he writes, and it is the lesson repeatedly rehearsed in How Milton Works.

I cannot think of a more impressive work of literary interpretation published in the past forty or so years. As a close reader--of just about anything--Stanley Fish has no peer.--Frank Lentricchia, author of After the New Criticism

How Milton Works is a tremendously impressive and important book for Miltonists--important because of the sustained originality of the argument, the sharpness of some of its textual analysis, and because it will become a standard reference point with which to align oneself by proximity or remoteness.--Joad Raymond, Times Higher Education Supplement

In How Milton Works, Stanley Fish defends his title as the reigning specialist on Milton by taking on all critical challengers single-handed. This forcefully and lucidly argued book is necessary both for readers and scholars of Milton, and for readers interested to see how Fish works at the height of his literary and rhetorical powers.--Elaine Showalter, author of A Literature of Their Own